A man in his 50s died Sunday night after his sedan slammed into the concrete walls of the Alma Street underpass on Oregon Expressway in Palo Alto, police said. Officers extricated the driver from the wreckage and found him unconscious before he was pronounced dead at the scene.
The crash happened shortly before midnight as the man was driving westbound on Oregon Expressway, according to a police news release reported by Palo Alto Online. Police said the driver hit the underpass wall while heading westbound, and investigators believe no other vehicles were involved in the collision. The Santa Clara County Office of the Medical Examiner-Coroner had not released the man's identity as of yesterday afternoon.
Palo Alto police said they did not yet know whether drugs or alcohol played a role in the crash, and the cause remains under investigation. The department closed the roadway for about six hours, spanning Sunday night and Monday morning, while officers worked the scene.
A Stretch of Road With a Troubled History
The Alma Street underpass, where Oregon Expressway dips beneath Alma Street, Park Boulevard and the Caltrain tracks between concrete retaining walls, has seen fatal crashes before. On December 16, 2024, a 20-year-old motorcyclist died in a solo crash at the same location after striking the curb along westbound Oregon Expressway, according to the City of Palo Alto.
That earlier death led to a wrongful-death lawsuit filed in Santa Clara County Superior Court in December 2025, in which the motorcyclist's mother accused Palo Alto and Santa Clara County of allowing road defects and poor maintenance to create a dangerous condition on the same stretch of westbound Oregon Expressway. Hoodline reported on the lawsuit last December.
Jurisdiction over the road is split. Oregon Expressway, designated County Route G3, is maintained by the Santa Clara County Roads and Airports Department, while the City of Palo Alto sets speed limits and local traffic ordinances, per Wikipedia. The posted speed limit on the stretch of Oregon Expressway between Middlefield Road and Alma Street is 35 mph under Palo Alto Municipal Code.
Corridor Flagged as High-Risk Before the Crash
Palo Alto's own safety planners had already identified this corridor as a problem area. A February 2025 Systemic Safety Action Plan designated Oregon Expressway as part of the city's High-Injury Network, a classification based on an analysis of 1,313 injury crashes citywide between 2018 and 2022, according to San José Spotlight.
Sunday's crash also fits a broader pattern of late-night, solo-vehicle collisions with fixed infrastructure around Palo Alto. On September 27, 2025, a man in his 40s died when his pickup truck hit an elevated median on Alma Street near the University Avenue overcrossing, not far from Sunday's crash site. And on June 25, 2025, a man in his 50s died after his pickup swerved off San Antonio Road near Alma Street and struck a tree.
Fatal collisions in Palo Alto are investigated by the police department's Specialized Traffic Accident Reconstruction team, which conducts physical evidence mapping and crash analysis. That process remains ongoing for Sunday's crash, and no findings on speed, drugs or alcohol have been released.
Anyone with information about the crash is asked to call the Palo Alto Police Department's dispatch center at 650-329-2413 or send an anonymous tip by text to 847411 with the word PAPD.
